Alara Permaculture Forest Garden

Citymapper
These garden spaces on Camley Street were formed from unused land around commercial buildings on an industrial estate close to King's Cross in central London.

The first job was the removal of about 50 tons of rubbish, plus four months spent digging out Japanese knotweed. The largest area was enclosed and terraced using coppiced sweet-chestnut logs.

Planting as a permaculture forest garden began in 2006 with silverberry, pomegranate, Japanese wineberry, apricot, apple, pear, plum, edible hawthorn and many other perennial food plants.

To this has been added a vineyard next to a lorry park, an orchard by a cash & carry car park, community raised beds and a communal compost heap. In 2014 we built a greenhouse and extended the meeting area.

There have been a huge number of people involved in this garden, who have turned up to help on the many planting and party days that are held here. Day to day, the gardens are maintained by the team at Alara and we harvest around 750kg of fresh foods from these gardens on a continuous year-round basis. We get visitors from around the world.